Konami
Konami is finally finished. You can download it at a new section of the site devoted to solo music adventures - okaysamurai.com/music.
It's not perfect, but I think I made it sound as good as my knowledge of recording would take it. Eric Espiritu and Blake Surbey were invaluable with their technical support. I also drove to Borders a few times and read stuff from books like the "Idiot's Guide To Home Recording." I hope that if you compare this song to some of my earlier efforts (from Abandoned Mine Cart to Hawaiian Treehouse), the quality is a lot clearer and crisper.
Konami, for the non-video-game crowd out there, is the name of a major company that created games like Contra, Gradius, Castlevania and any game featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The chorus of the song, "Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start," is the most famous code in video game history - and it appeared in several games on the original Nintendo. It took me a while to feel comfortable saying this, but now I've got to say that video game music is one of my biggest influences. As a few of you know (or recently found out...hmm...), I went through a borderline obsessive video game phase when most teenagers were going through their rebellion stage. Because the sounds and quality were limited on a system like Super Nintendo, a lot of games threw in music as an afterthought, and it sounded like the stereotypes: crappy bleeps and bloops. But some games realized the shortcomings and focused instead on melody, harmonies, and implementing them in the game environment. I started to transpose the songs to piano; I remember playing the first level theme from Enix's Actraiser at a piano recital. And then I started to add lyrics, which was how we got the first song for the band, Grasshopper Suicide (taken from Star Fox's Corneria level). More epic games like the Zelda and Final Fantasy series had symphonic music that completely overwhelmed me, many rivaling film scores. So yeah, if I could take one positive thing out of the entire video game phase, it was definitely the music. Since school started, I've played my Gamecube only a handful of times (See Mike, I should have sold it to you before moving). I don't know if it's about me getting older or losing interest, but there are still some amazing games, especially from an artistic perspective. Have you seen the Nintendo ad in theatres where all the Japanese schoolchildren are emulating Nintendo characters? I think it was cool until the end, when the kids all have masks on. I had an idea for a more effective ending, since advertising is starting to become somewhat intravenous. When the store owner turned to face the kids, he should of seen the crowd normally, but then a kid in the background jumps up and hits an invisible question mark block from the Mario games. You hear the iconic "cling" sound and cut to the logo.
I won't be writing again until next week because it's getting to be crunch time in school. So Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy Konami.
Saturday, November 22 at 5:41 PM
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